STATEMENT ON THE REMOVAL OF THE YORK POPULAR UNIVERSITY FOR PALESTINE ENCAMPMENT

The Critical Femininities Conference Committee condemns York University administration’s use of police force to physically remove the York Popular University for Palestine encampment held at the Peoples’ Commons for Palestine. On Thursday, June 6th, 2024, York University Administration made the shameful and violent decision to call militarized Toronto Police Services onto the Keele campus leading to the arrest of three students & community members, fines, and violent dismantling of the Encampment; including a sacred fire being kept by Indigenous Matriarchs. 
  
As students and workers, we join with other organizations at York, including CUPE 3903, the York Federation of Students, and the Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies program in condemning York University’s actions.  

This is reflective of the kind of colonial and patriarchal violence that continues to marginalize femininity and systemically restrict gendered expression, both here and abroad. Resisting policing and colonial oppression is part of resisting the structures which reify harmful binaries that subjugate people along the lines of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and more.

We demand that the university commit to repairing the harm they caused to York community members exercising their right to peaceful assembly and cease all use of militarized police and surveillance against students, staff, and faculty.  

We demand that the administration immediately undertake a good faith dialogue with the students on the substance of their demands—to disclose, divest and cut ties with institutions complicit in Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine. 

Signed,  
The Critical Femininities Conference Committee